Jane and Sarah are waiting for Colin as he gets home. Both wear the strained
expressions of people recently tangled in a lengthy and difficult discussion,
for Sarah is acutely conscious that maintaining her social standing at school
rests wholly on her travelling to the seaside, and is therefore totally
set on having her fifty pounds, even if it means giving her parents hell
until she gets it. But whilst so far she has whinged, and whined, and shed
bitter little tears, it has all been to no avail, and now she is in a very
bad mood indeed.

Jane has
naturally been wholly supportive. But she has also made it clear that
her support is wholly subject to Colin paying. She has a small and very
secret savings account that she keeps to finance occasional fashion whims:
she has seen a rather smart summer dress in a local boutique sale, and
knows that it is just the thing to enhance her standing at the coming
Church Guild fete. However the account is much too small to finance Sarah
as well, and Jane also fears to count her daughter in on her only resource,
for she knows very well that money once seen is never forgotten. So she
has stonewalled stolidly, and now has a bad headache from trying to watch
television and fend her daughter off at the same time.

Sarah glares
at her father accusingly as he limps in. She is getting nowhere, and must
now press very much harder. "Sister Teresa says we've got to pay
her by the end of the week."

Her tone
is threatening: Sister Teresa is school bursar at Saint Anne's Convent,
Sarah's school, and a firm believer in prompt settlements.

Colin says
nothing, but slumps into an armchair. He knows his daughter too well to
try and fight: Sarah has unmatched staying power when it comes to complaining.
His best defence is a wall of silence.

Jane gets
to her feet, recognising his arrival as a chance to escape.

"I think
I need a cup of tea."

But she is
not quite quick enough, and Sarah strikes very hard indeed.

"Mum
says I can ask Grandad if you don't pay."

She aims
at Colin, but her voice stops Jane dead in her tracks. Sarah's barb is
out and out blackmail, and also totally untrue. Jane's father has given
Sarah small sums of money from time to time on the Vasts' regular weekend
visits to Jane's parents in Beaconsfield: a couple of pounds here, a fiver
there. But all his presents have been occasional gifts: surprises, made
at good moments and received with many smiles and kisses, and Jane has
a vision of her father in a black fury if Sarah sets out to scrounge and
asks for as much as fifty pounds.

He will doubtless
pay, but Sarah may very well torpedo all Jane's own hopes of charming
any future chunks of cash out of him for herself. So she has already roundly
rejected two attempts by Sarah to talk her into acting as an intermediary,
and Sarah's ploy is an outrage.

Colin pales.
Jack Wise, Jane's father, invariably lectures him at length on the benefits
of prudence and financial self-sufficiency whenever they meet, and he
presently needs another sermon on saving about as much as he needs a hole
in the back of his head.

Sarah senses
that she has both her parents on the run, and presses home her attack.
"I'll ring him." She speaks thoughtfully, as though to herself.
"I'll get the money tomorrow if he posts it tonight."

For a moment
Jane looks as though she would dearly like to slap her daughter's face.
But then she gives way. "I'll talk to your father." She speaks
hurriedly, saying the first thing that comes into her mind.

Colin closes
his eyes in a vain bid to shut himself off from this fast developing squabble.
But it is too late. A hand descends on his shoulder, it is a summons.

Jane's face
is blotchy as she confronts him in their small kitchen. "You've got
to give her the money." Her voice is taut.

"I can't."
He spreads his hands in a gesture of emptiness.

"You
had it the day before yesterday." Jane knows that she is tempting
danger, but she no longer cares. Sarah has triggered a major crisis, and
now she must also use every weapon she can. "I went through your
pockets when you changed your suit, you had five tenners." She can
see anger building in Colin, and strikes home before he can retaliate.
"Have you been gambling again?"

Colin winces.
But at the same time a lightning jolt of relief cancels all pain, for
she has totally missed her mark, distracted by a time when Colin had taken
a hot racing tip from Twister, borrowed a fiver from Jane for finance,
and lost. She has aimed, and missed, and now he is free.

His mind
screeches into overdrive, conjures up a smart excuse in less than the
blink of an eye, and he makes a small, panicky flapping gesture as though
conceding discovery.

"I,
er, lent it to Tim. He needed some cash in a hurry." It is a lie,
and Colin knows that it is a weak and pretty obvious lie. But he is also
sure that he will suffer far less by crawling to Twister and begging an
advance from RichQuick's petty cash than admitting the truth.

Jane realises
that she has missed. But she also knows, that if he says he has lent money,
he can get it back, and therefore pay up, and so she no longer greatly
cares. She can feel her headache growing worse, and she needs to lie somewhere
quiet and relax.

She sighs
wearily. "Tell her she can have it tomorrow."

She watches
Colin return to their drawingroom and massages her throbbing temples with
her fingertips. She wonders sometimes whether she should take the advice
that her father has increasingly been pressing on her: to flee with Sarah
to Beaconsfield, and dump Colin for good.

She has always
resisted to date, for she shares the general opinion of most married women
in classing separated and divorced women by and large as failures. But
she is beginning to wonder how much more she can take. She decides that
it is time for her to retire to bed, and give the matter some serious
thought.

Colin finds
Sarah deep in a soap. He hesitates for a moment, confused by the brightly
lit television screen and the broadcast sound of a family squabble echoing
his very own family row.

Sarah glares
at him. "Are you going to give me the money?" She speaks sharply,
she dislikes being disturbed during one of her favourite programmes, especially
when she knows that she has both her parents running scared.

Colin nods
wearily.

"Good".
She grunts an acknowledgement, and vanishes back into her dream world.

Colin feels
murderous, but there is nothing he can do. He watches television for a
little while, and tries once to make polite small talk during a commercial
break, asking Sarah questions about school and her coming trip. But she
replies in bad-tempered monosyllables, and his mind is not really on the
job, but filled with his own dream of his approaching rendezvous, with
two pretty grey eyes and a small tortoiseshell cat with velvet soft paws.

Time passes,
and Colin grows hungry. He levers himself out of his armchair to stand
hopefully at the bottom of the stairs, but his bedroom door is shut, and
Jane shows no sign of surfacing. He must fend for himself, and feed Sarah
to keep her docile. He decides to combat vegetarian slimming with a hefty
helping of pasta, and heats up a generously large saucepan of pasta, with
a smaller well-spiced saucepan of his very own recipe bolognaise sauce.

Sarah insists
on eating in front of the television, so he dines in the kitchen on his
own, helping himself to perhaps rather a larger plateful of pasta than
Jane might allow, washes up dutifully, and makes himself a cup of coffee.

Now it is
almost time. He looks into the family room to announce that he is going
for an evening stroll, but Sarah merely grunts an acknowledgement.

The secret
garden is deserted. Colin sits on a bench and waits, remembering with
a pang of guilt that he has forgotten to bring any provisions - but it
is too late now to search for catfood.

For a moment
the garden is silent. Then he hears footsteps, and looks up to see the
fairhaired girl approaching, dressed now in a short flowered frock, cradling
her cat in her arms. She smiles at him shyly and stops in front of the
bench, letting the cat jump down: she has it secure on a red lead clipped
to a small red elastic harness.

Colin and
the cat inspect each other cautiously as he stretches out his hand.

"He
ought to remember you." The girl's voice carries a note of anxiety.
"Have you brought him something to nibble?"

Colin shakes
his head guiltily, but the tortoiseshell is already reassured, and a small
pink tongue licks at his forefinger. He looks up. "I meant to, but
it's been a hard day."

The girl
considers his words, standing in front of him. For a moment they are both
silent, the small cat their only link. Colin badly wants to say something
friendly, but is lost for words.

Then the
cat is suddenly alert, transfixed by the sight of a robin on a nearby
bush. The robin chatters at it angrily, and the girl has to bend quickly
to gather it back into her arms, lest it break free.

She sits
down on the bench beside Colin, holding the cat tight, and then lets him
stroke its head, and take it from her, to cradle on his own lap.

"He
likes you, you can see that." She speaks softly, fondly. "He
don't always take to strangers."

Colin beams,
he is flattered.

"Don't
you have a cat?"

Colin wishes
sometimes that he did, to provide an escape from a bossy wife and daughter,
but Jane regards cats as destructive animals, given to clawing chunks
out of carpets and chairs.

"Wouldn't
you like one?"

He realises
with a start of surprise that the girl is sizing him up. But it is something
very pleasing, and soon they are talking freely, as though they are established
friends. She tells him that her name is Dorothy, and that she goes to
secondary school, but hopes to leave soon and get a job, probably in a
shop, because she likes meeting people. She speaks with an indefinable
air of wistfulness, and it is plain that she wants to escape. She tells
him again of her mother walking out on her father, and her sister, named
Alexandra, but known as Sandy, who works for Caleys, the John Lewis store
in Windsor High Street. She talks of Prince, her cat, and trying to teach
it to go for walks, of taking Prince into Windsor Great Park one day and
thinking of running away.

"But
we couldn't, you know, because we didn't have anywhere to go."

She smiles
a little sadly at the memory, grey eyes shining, and the tortoishell raises
its head, and blinks, and purrs on Colin's lap, and they are three good
friends together.

Colin is
bewitched. He strokes the tortoiseshell and tells Dorothy a little about
himself, working as a journalist in London, commuting every day, trapped
in stuffy trains.

Dorothy frowns.
"Would you keep on going up and down every day, if you didn't have
to?"

Colin considers
her question, but he already knows his answer. "I'd run away as well."
His words slip out before he has time to vet and approve them, and he
feels suddenly naked.

Dorothy nods
approvingly. "We're the same sort of person." She turns and
smiles at Colin, her whole face alight, and for a moment he finds himself
wanting to throw his arms around her, to enfold her, and protect her,
and take her to himself.

But his impulse
only lasts a split-second. Dorothy is young enough to be his daughter,
and it is pure foolishness to try and fashion her into a fantasy.

For a moment
grey eyes search his, and Dorothy's stare hardens a little. "But
you'd be scared." It is a question as well as a statement, and Colin
looks away, feeling as though he has been searched through and through
and found wanting.

Then she
laughs softly, and the sound is forgiving, and no condemnation. "You're
like my dad." The softness in her voice is a tenderness. "He
could scare easily too, at times. We used to play games, jumping out at
him in the dark. But he never let us down."

She raises
her face towards his, and Colin has to fight to prevent himself from kissing
her.

The tortoiseshell
cat breaks the spell, with a decision that it has been sitting on Colin's
lap for long enough. It stretches, and jumps down, and Dorothy takes its
lead as it walks again, and chases robins, and investigates some dark
corners of bushes. For a while they watch it at play, until it starts
to grow cool, and it is time to go home.

Colin is
sad. He feels that he is somehow making a mess of things, in a life that
he has littered with too many messes, and he avoids Dorothy's eyes as
they face each other at the garden entrance.

She is holding
her cat, and she lifts it until it is level with his face, and a small
furry paw momentarily touches his cheek.

"Prince
says thankyou, and to tell you that he'll come here again this time next
week."

Dorothy's
voice is barely more than a whisper. She stares at Colin again for a moment,
her eyes searching his, and reaches up, to kiss him quickly on the side
of his chin. The touch of her lips is very soft, a butterfly caress, and
then she is gone, hurrying away before he has time to reply.

Colin is
transfixed. He stands for several minutes without moving, his mind in
a whirl: hearing Dorothy's voice, and still feeling the touch of her lips,
and is caught up in a maze of doubts and questions and fears. A siren
voice in his mind tells him that he is young again, in a world promising
adventure, and challenges him to action. But cold reality intervenes,
and reminds him of his age, and tolls a warning.

He begins
to walk home, lost somewhere between a dream and a daze, passes his front
door and walks on, struggling to become rational and cool-headed as waves
of irrational excitement sweep through him each time he attempts to instill
regulation and order, so that he advances in a kind of distracted quadrille,
stepping out jauntily every few paces, and beaming at passing strangers,
before relapsing back into slow reveries.

Something
magic is happening, for good or evil, and his world is threatening to
spiral out of control. Somebody has chosen him as a friend, and he has
been hiding from friendship for a very long time. Somebody is showing
him tenderness, and Colin considers himself deprived, paunchy, and middle-aged.
Somebody has kissed him, and Colin's heart is ablaze.

Yet nothing
makes sense, and everything is fraught with danger. Dorothy is only a
girl, and may just look on him as a surrogate father figure - she may
find closer ties repellent, and condemn his dream as corruption. She might
talk, and pave a way for private and public opinion to compound his downfall:
first in massacre by Jane and Sarah, then a lynching in the local papers,
and possibly the nationals as well, with loss of home, and loss of status,
leading to loss of job, and the death of his dream.

He wonders
whether he dare meet her again, and knows that he cannot refuse; his emotions
whirl, and flounder, and make no sense of things at all. Dreams seem about
to rule, but dreams can also soon become nightmares. He twists and turns
in his mind this way and that, exhilarated and confused, hopeful and yet
fearful, and knows - with a kind of inescapable dread - that excitement
and challenge will now drive him inexorably forward, and that fate will
blindly govern all.